Bush takes aim at 'liberal' rivals

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Democrat vice-presidential candidate John Edwards silhouetted at a rally in Florida. The Republicans are contrasting his lack of experience on national security with George Bush and Dick Cheney's wealth of it.Picture:Reuters

The Republicans are painting John Kerry and John Edwards as liberals out of touch with traditional values, reports Marian Wilkinson from Washington.

When George Bush talks about his rival John Kerry on the campaign trail, he always refers to him as "the senator from Massachusetts". That is code in the conservative south and rural Midwest for a northern liberal who doesn't go to church and supports gay marriage, abortion and gun control.

One day after Kerry picked the charismatic southern John Edwards as his running mate, Bush was campaigning in North Carolina, the senator's home state, and he had a simple message: Southerners will not elect Kerry even with Edwards on the ticket. "When they go to the polls to vote for president they'll understand that the senator from Massachusetts doesn't share their values," said Bush. "And that's the difference in the campaign."

Within hours of President Bush's attack, Kerry and Edwards announced they would be going to North Carolina on Sunday to attend church services together.

But despite this effort to exploit John Edwards's populist southern charm, he will have an uphill battle to win North Carolina or many other southern states for the Democrats, except Florida. That's because white voters in the south, both male and female, turned overwhelmingly Republican after Ronald Reagan won office in 1980, according to Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg. The Republican platform repudiated inter-racial school bussing, abortion and called for prayer in schools, and ever since, the Republicans' use of "God, guns and gays" in the south has been effectively undermining the Democrats.

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Kerry does not expect Edwards to storm the south. Instead, he wants him to help win over the battleground states of the Midwest, where the swinging voters are torn between their conservative values and their hip-pocket worries. Edwards's rags to riches story, rising from a mill worker's son to become a wealthy trial lawyer, resonates with these voters. And so does his message. The Democrats have values too, he says, and they amount to more than church-going.

In his first outing on the campaign trail with Kerry this week, Edwards attacked head-on the claim that the Democrats "don't share your values". Surrounded by his wife and his photogenic young children, Edwards told supporters in Cleveland, Ohio, "The real reason that John Kerry and I are here together is that we share the same values. I'm talking about the values that I grew up with in that small town in North Carolina - faith, family, opportunity, responsibility, trying to make sure that everybody gets a chance to do what they're capable of doing."

The Republicans' main strategy is to label John Kerry as a "north-eastern liberal" out of touch with mainstream America.Picture:AP

Turning on the attack with his trademark smile, Edwards pumped out his mantra. "The American people are going to reject the tired, old, hateful, negative politics of the past; they are going to embrace the politics of hope, the politics of what's possible, because this is America, where everything's possible."

By the time he finished, Kerry, who had fought Edwards for the top place on the Democratic ticket just months ago, was beaming at him. That night, an NCB television poll was beaming at him. It found that Edwards had given the Kerry campaign an 11-point bounce, putting him well ahead of Bush.

While the value of this early poll is highly dubious, it did show that more people thought the inexperienced Edwards would make a better vice-president than Bush's running mate, Dick Cheney. Not surprisingly, the Republican campaign is making every effort to destroy Edwards's political credibility.

Bush launched the first attack. Asked how Edwards "described today as charming, engaging, a nimble campaigner, a populist and even sexy" stacked up against Dick Cheney, Bush snapped, "Dick Cheney can be president."

It took Kerry just a few hours to shoot back that Bush was right. "Dick Cheney was ready to take over on day one, and he did and has been ever since, folks, and that's what we have got to change."

But when the White House announced a new al-Qaeda terrorist threat late this week it underscored Bush's claim that Edwards's inexperience on national security stood in stark contrast to Cheney's long resume.

The warning drew a cynical response, privately, from some Democrats who fear that Bush will exploit the terrorist threat in the lead-up to the November elections against Kerry and Edwards. But few would publicly criticise the warning in the wake of September 11.

The Republicans' efforts to undermine Edwards on national security is just one prong of their attack. More effective, they hope, will be targeting his past career as a wealthy personal injury trial lawyer. A lengthy Republican attack sheet on Edwards put out by the National Committee highlights his multimillion-dollar campaign donations from trial lawyers and his fights in the US Senate to protect their interests. "Edwards puts personal injury trial lawyer buddies over protecting American business," say the Republicans, citing his efforts to stop limits on law suits against health insurance companies, gun manufacturers and doctors. Next week in the Senate, the Republicans are pushing ahead on a bill to limit class action lawsuits that will serve as a platform for a broad assault on Edwards and trial lawyers who, say the Republicans, are destroying American business.

"They like to talk about two Americas," said one Republican referring to Edwards's stump speech on inequality.

"Well, there's one America where personal-injury lawyers make literally billions of dollars off these court cases and there's the other America where plaintiffs get pennies on the dollar and lose their access to medical care."

Whether this attack will hurt Edwards is debatable. Many Americans, especially in the south, look on personal injury lawyers as a weapon against big business power.

As Democrat adviser James Carville put it bluntly, the Republicans love Ken Starr, the special prosecutor against Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky investigation who worked for the tobacco companies. But they hate the trial lawyers who won the class actions on behalf of addicted smokers and curbed the power of big tobacco.

More effective may be the Republicans' strategy to open up the debate on a constitutional amendment in the Senate next week banning gay marriage. Edwards is on the record saying he would oppose it. This opposition will reinforce the Republicans' principal strategy against Edwards and Kerry, to label them both as representing the values of "north-eastern liberals" out of touch with mainstream America.